marrickville week (4)

Source: ABS Census Data

marrickville week (3)

Source: yewenyi


Source: OZinOH


Source: lucid7

marrickville week (2)

Source: Marrickville Image Library

marrickville week (1)

This is the street where I live now. On the downside, there is no baker's cart plying its wares every morning. On the upside, I don't have to shovel up the horse dung from the baker's cart every morning.

Source: Marrickville Image Library

man week (6): little acts

Men like doing stuff. We are creatures of action. However in my case, "stuff" consists of sitting in front of the TV promising to fix the busted tap in the laundry (I will, I will).

So with all this Man Week stuff, I'm curious as to how this all plays out into action. We bare our souls and have our group hug and it's all like an episode of Thirtysomething but online.

So I'm interested in what happens next. Not big things. Just little things. I can think of a few off the bat.

man week (5): brutal

Man Week is leading to some darned interesting blogging. One theme that crops is violence. Mostly men being violent to each other via bullying (the issue of men being violent to women crops up less in the writing so far). And it's true. Men - esp. young men - are brutal. And this cuts both ways - the most frequent victims of violence are also young men. This happens at all levels of intensity. I have never murdered anyone. I was bullied at school and I also bullied others. I still feel I am a very angry man but not an especially violent one*.

So if my child is a son, what can I do? I think role modelling is really important. But what does that mean? I can't see myself beating people up in front of him. How I control my temper is going to be important. As will be my assertiveness. One of the most painful lessons in life for me has been the need to meet conflict directly rather than avoid it. I would rather he learned that lesson early.

But beyond that I'm not sure. Mark Pollard mentions martial arts and I would love a son to take up one of these sports - because they are about control & discipline**.

Any ideas bloggerati?


Source: Economist

*We all have emotional motors that power us though our lives. I would like to say I am driven by a desire to better the world or by an ambition to be the best at whatever I do but if I'm honest with myself it's just non-specific rage - as destructive as it is creative. My tombstone will probably have "What are you looking at, breather?" carved on it.

**May be we should bring back national service. And the death penalty. Hang on...

Man Tag

• Oscar Nicholson
• Zac Martin
• Luke Naismith
  

man week (4): gay

I'm not gay. I checked when I was about 20*. All the stuff above the waist on the other person was fine but there was some extra equipment down there that seemed a little superfluous. I think the technical term may be "cock block".

Reflecting on this experience makes me wonder how difficult it must be for a closeted gay man trying to fit in. Going through the motions. Doing something that's not quite right.

For a few years I was a volunteer at the Ankali Project where I was often "token straight guy". One thing that I think separates gay men from straight men is that you have to choose who you are. Now I don't mean that people "choose" their sexuality because I don't think that's true. Rather being straight is the default option in our society. Coming out as gay requires that you set yourself apart. You have to make a choice about your identity and how you present that publically.

Beyond all that Queer Eye for the Straight Guy interior design stuff, I think that's a key lesson straight men can learn from our non-straight brethren. Understand that you own who you are and that default behaviours are not the only way of being a man.

*At the time I thought I might be uncomfortable with my sexuality. It was more a case of being uncomfortable with myself.

Man Tag

• Daniel Oyston
• Stuart French
• Mal Damkar
  

man week (3): bodies

It's still Man Week. I'm struggling a bit. I don't want to turn this blog into some pale imitation of All Men Are Liars. So each day will be a brief vignette. Make of them what you will.

I once considered becoming a masseur. So I spoke to this guy that was quite experienced in the industry and was connected to a yoga studio I was involved with. He was a big guy. Brick s***-house. Tats. Very macho. Ex-motor mechanic. He had been a petrolhead who loved to strip down & rebuild cars. He'd got bored with that game and decided to do something else with his hands. Massage, obviously. Another set of machines to fix. The switch from mechanic to masseur made complete sense to me.

He said it was a tough game for straight guy. Straight men don't necessarily want other straight men touching them. And if women interpreted any move as being sleazy your name would be mud. But many of his clients valued his strength. They weren't going to get some light backrub. Their muscles were going to be well and truly moved.

Man Tag

• Scott Drummond
• Jye Smith
• Julian Cole
  

man week (2): being a dad

So Mark Pollard has written most excellently about being a Dad. And as it's Man Week it would be churlish not to write about my own experiences of impending fatherhood.

Basically it's all a bit scary. And oddly detached. The Mum, she's feeling it. That child is an overpowering biological reality for her. For the Dad, not so much. Not our insides being rearranged by a baby. Not our hormones driven from pillar to post by a new life.

For men it's all a little more... conceptual. They say the two events that propel you into adulthood are the death of a parent and the birth of a child. And they are right.

So that's it. You are a grown-up. Which frankly isn't so terrible. I've been a grown up for a long time. Not a particularly successful grown up but an adult nonetheless. And I'm ready to be old. Because the older you get, the less you have to worry about what other people think. I now have the freedom to be an embarrassing Dad. Uncool in every way.

My child has given me this wonderful gift: adulthood. A role of both short-term necessity and ultimate obsolescence. I need not be the oldest teenager in town. Call that music? Hah!

Thank you.

Man Tags

• Geoff Brown
• James Dellow
• Cory Banks

Come on lads. Blog it like you mean it.

do i think you're sexy?

Gav starts talking (un)sexy:

But let me tell you a little secret. This sort of social media (and almost every aspect of social media) is just not sexy. It doesn’t have the glitz and glamour or even the spotlights of advertising; and there’s not the breathtaking scale of large format outdoor advertising.

Now let me share something with you here that I have mentioned before. There are two kinds of sexy in the world.

The first is simply being desirable. Being the bright, young, slinky, shiny thing. And here Gav is right. I don't think social software is that bright or shiny or slinky.

But the second kind of sexy is slightly different, less discussed but far more important. It's all about making others feel desirable. Healthy sexual relationships are built on mutual desire and it's terribly important for all of us to feel desired*. Some of the most charismatic people I have met make you feel like you are at the centre of their attention. Can this be faked & abused? Of course. But its power cannot be denied.

And this is where social software can be sexy. Because by listening to people, by making them feel wanted and important, we make others feel sexy. Of course we can finish this process by either discarding our conquests or trying to develop something deeper. The choice is open but it has consequences.

Given the choice between being desired and making others feel desirable, I would always go for the latter (but then with a face like mine I would say that).

Go forth and make the world a sexier place.

*Coincidentally I was going to do a session about this at BarCamp Sydney 5 but I had to have a little nap instead. The doctor has told me that I can't have too much excitement.

man week (1): having a dad

I have just been informed that its Man Week by both Gav Heaton & Mark Pollard. Obviously my testosterone-fuelled machismo has conditioned a Pavlovian response to the term "man" with the linked term "Matt Moore" in their minds (in a purely heterosexual way of course). So this week I will blogging about being a man.

Let's cut to the chase. I'm not actually that comfortable with some aspects of being a man in either English or Australian culture. The blokey, beery, laddish stereotype that some men espouse ain't me. I tried it when I was younger but I was a total failure at being a lad. "Cor, er, look at the, er, tits on that. Anyone read the Times Literary Supplement this week?"

I don't like sport. My Mum is more of a sports fan than I am. Please don't make me watch the footie*. Please don't ask me what team I support. Because then I'll have to break your clumsy yet charming attempts at male-bonding & socialising by telling you the truth.

A big reason behind this is probably my Dad. If you're going to write about being a man, you have to write a little about fathers.

Papa was a rolling stone. Wherever he laid his hat was his home. And when he died, all he left us was alone.

My Dad isn't a rolling stone. He's a very gentle man with a very warped sense of humour (something inherited by both my brother & I) who takes his responsibilities seriously. He is happy with his homebrew, his cycling, my Mum & writing puppet shows for the local church. Despite a spell being a stoker in the navy, he's not especially macho. Nor is he especially interested in sport.

According to all those dramas about men in traumatic relationships with their fathers, where that which needs to be said remains unsaid, I should have terrible difficulty relating to him. But I'm not sure I do. We are different people but we share so much. I have grown to appreciate everything he's done. I think this is true of many father/son relationships (another, fictional Gavin & his Dad come to mind). Many of us do want our Dads to be proud of us. And I hope that many of them are.

A brief intermission from Tricky:

...strong enough to take a life.
Are you strong enough to take care of one?

Now that's something I could sign up to. More on this tomorrow...

*I don't mind being at a footie match but that's mostly because I want to watch the crowd and sense the collective waves of emotion that roil around the stadium. It's like being in a psychic washing machine.

Man Tag

I would like to invite the following to discourse on manliness on their blogs.

• Gav Heaton
• Mark Pollard
• Brad Hinton

There will be 3 more invites per day this week. Gird your blogging loins gentlemen.

Ma

Pots are formed from clay,

but the empty space between it

is the essence of the pot. - Lao Tse

Listening is only partially about what is said. What is unsaid is often more important. This is one important reason why machines struggle to interpret human speech. They can only work with what is there.

The concept of "negative space" is used in painting to describe the spaces between objects. It's important. The objects and the space in which they sit are closely related. You might call "negative space" by another name: "context".

I had the same experience again in a very different context this morning in a hospice sitting with a friend who is dying and talking to her son. Bizarrely about sport: the England game last night, the Lions Tour, 2020 world series and Andy Murray. Although our topic was carefully chosen to keep us away from the theme of impending death I couldn't help noticing how aligned the themes we spoke of were with the figure in the bed alongside us - metaphors about mental strength, injury, weakness letting go. - Further & Faster

And then I stumbled over the concept of "Ma". Gap. Pause. Lacuna. Space. Betweenness. Our interactions and our lives are full of Ma*. Are you listening hard enough to the spaces?

*As I write there's some dub reggae on the radio - a music built on the use of space (to build intensity, a dub producer subtracts rather than adds sounds).